Editing FutureGen (section)

===Challenges===
Maintaining the project schedule and keeping costs down were two major challenges with which the DOE and the FutureGen Alliance grappled. The project had remained on schedule with the announcement of the host site before the end of 2007; however, a desire by DOE to restructure the project’s financial arrangement has brought the project to a halt.

In December 2007, the DOE Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy James Slutz stated that projected cost overruns for the project "require a reassessment of FutureGen's design."  And that "This will require restructuring FutureGen to maximize the role of private-sector innovation, facilitate the most productive public-private partnership, and prevent further cost escalation."<ref name="Illinois wins, official warned">{{cite news | last = Fowler | first = Tom | title = Illinois wins coal project, and along with it a tussle / Official warned against announcing winning town in $1.8 billion project | work = Houston Chronicle | date = 2007-12-18 | url = https://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2007_4480471 | access-date = 2008-01-31}}</ref>

The FutureGen Alliance wrote a letter to the Department of Energy’s Under Secretary C.H. “Bud” Albright Jr. stating that overall inflation and the rising cost of raw materials and engineering services are driving costs up on energy projects around the world. According to [[James L. Connaughton]], chairman of the White House [[Council on Environmental Quality]], the market for steel, concrete and power plant components has “just gone through the roof globally”, and much of the reason is the construction of hundreds of new conventional coal plants.<ref>{{Cite news
  | last = Wald
  | first = Matthew L.
  | title = New Type of Coal Plant Moves Ahead, Haltingly
  | newspaper = The New York Times
  | date = 2007-12-18
  | url = https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/business/18coal.html
  | access-date = 2009-03-10
  }}</ref>

On January 11, 2008, the FutureGen Alliance sent a letter to the DOE offering to lower the government's portion of the project's costs.  The initial plans had called for DOE to pay based on a percentage of the total cost, and their portion had risen from about $620 million to about $1.33 billion.  The letter indicated that DOE's portion would now be $800 million.<ref>{{cite news | last = Mitchell | first = Tim | title = No future for FutureGen? | work = Champaign News-Gazette | date = 2008-01-30 | url = http://www.news-gazette.com/news/business/2008/01/30/no_future_for_futuregen | access-date = 2008-01-31}}</ref>

[[Risk management]] was a significant portion of the cost of the first FutureGen experimental implementation.<ref>[http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/futuregen/EIS/FG%20Risk%20Assessment%20110807.pdf Final Risk Assessment Report for the FutureGen Project Environmental Impact Statement] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080216073054/http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/futuregen/EIS/FG%20Risk%20Assessment%20110807.pdf |date=2008-02-16 }}, U.S. Department of Energy, October 2, 2007</ref> FutureGen involved many complex never-before-solved technology problems. The risks also included significant health risks, if the untested-technology systems failed to work correctly.